


(the beating of our hearts is) the only sound

by heartshapedcandy



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2020-04-06 20:42:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19070308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartshapedcandy/pseuds/heartshapedcandy
Summary: “I may or may not have told her that I was seeing someone.”“Someone?”“You, specifically.”orcomplications arise at the annual Schnee Manor Yuletide Celebration as Blake and Yang are forced to navigate their relationship, Weiss pulls out a fourth party planning binder, and Ruby breaks into the spiked eggnog.ora fake dating holiday party au





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> is it sexy that I started writing this in December and then lost steam and only now dug out the draft again? nothing like a holiday themed fic to heat up your 80 degree summer.

Yang slams into the room without knocking, already halfway through her sentence.

“—such a scam, you know?”

Blake yelps, crossing one arm over her chest, the other grabbing for her pajama top. Yang collapses backward onto the bed and regards her upside-down.

“Calm down, it’s just me.”

“ _Knock_ , Yang.”

“Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

Blake tugs the shirt over her head, briefly lost in the swathes of dark fabric, the sharp smell of lilac detergent. “If I was Weiss I would give you another talk about boundaries.”

Yang grins and rolls to her front, pillowing her chin on folded hands. “Yeah, but you’re not Weiss. You’re my lovely partner. Have I mentioned you look particularly radiant today?”

Blake flips her hair over the collar of her shirt, and flashes a look at the wall length mirror. The frame is gaudy and ornamental, decorated with snowflake accents and sleek, white finish. She catches Yang’s eyes in the surface and quirks an eyebrow. “What do you want?”

In the reflection, Yang’s smile grows, all canine and sharp. She’s wearing one of her endless supply of orange tanks and soft, terry-cloth shorts that—upon closer consideration—Blake is pretty sure are hers. Her skin is bronzed and freckled from the sun, out of the place in the mid-winter Atlas north, desperately distracting in that broad-shouldered way of hers, her mouth tilted in a lopsided, dimpled grin.

They’d come straight to Atlas after a three month stint in Kuo Kuana, running surveillance for the reformed White Fang, helping Ilia and her parents rebuild in post-war Remnant. Yang spent every free second in Menagerie basking in the static south-eastern heat, lounging beachside and dragging Blake to cabanas all over the city. They’d spend whole afternoons drinking in thatch huts at the ocean’s edge, Yang gilded in a salt-crusted sunlight glow, bathing suit damp, smelling like sunblock and heat.

Though Yang would often disappear for weekends at a time, lost in tropic, solitary explorations or in someone else’s bed, Monday mornings Blake would wake to find Yang waiting for her—like this, splayed out in Blake’s peripheral, her only constant.

Blake leans in closer to the mirror, fixing the static-muss of her bangs, swiping her fingertips under her eyes, cleaning the dark smudged remnants of eyeliner. When she steps back, Yang’s reflection is still watching her, her mouth softening, blinking slow. Blake turns. “And what’s the scam?”

“This Yuletide party,” Yang says. “Weiss is just using it to court donors. It’s so transparent.” She crooks a finger, gesturing Blake closer.

Blake complies, letting Yang tug her down onto the bed beside her. “Rich people love this stuff.”

“Yeah, you would know _heiress_.”

Blake rolls onto her side and Yang follows, the heel of her palm propped under her jaw, long fingers curling over her ear. She’s still wearing that odd half-smile.

“Just because my parents are politically involved in Menagerie—”

“Politically involved? They literally own the town.”

“Semantics.”

Yang laughs. The plush duvet dips under their weight, corralling them toward each other on the massive, ornate bed. The four frames are heavy with velvet drapes, the canopy tied back to create a cavernous effect, dim-lit and shadowed. The bedrooms in the Schnee Manor never disappoint, though Blake finds the entire thing a little ostentatious.

“So what did you come barging in here for?” Blake asks. “I know it wasn’t just to tell me I look good in pajamas.”

Yang pulls an exaggerated frown, feigning hurt. “A girl can’t just walk in on her best friend shirtless and call her hot?” She pouts her lip. “That’s not a world I want to live in.”

Blake dips closer to knock at Yang’s shoulder. “Now I _really_ know you want something.”

“Maybe I wanted to escape Weiss’s frantic party planning, she just brought out a fourth binder. Or—” Yang trails off and reaches out a hand slowly, her fingers framing Blake jaw. Blake breath catches in the back of her throat and she holds perfectly still, watching the sweep of Yang’s dark lashes, the concentrated furrow of her brow. Yang’s thumb rubs once, gentle, below her eye. “You still had some makeup.”

“Thanks.” Blake speaks on an exhale. It sounds breathier than she intended and she swallows hard, throat bobbing.

Yang has that smile again, the one that keeps cropping up recently, the one Blake doesn’t quite recognize. It dimples her right cheek, and she has to muffle the urge to reach out and touch the indention, to trace the freckles high on her cheekbones.

“You didn’t flinch,” Yang says, quiet. “You always flinch when someone touches your face.”

Blake rolls to her back, suddenly uncomfortable, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s just you.”

Yang mirrors her, collapsing backward with an _oof_. “Just me.”

If she sounds upset, Blake doesn’t know how to interpret it. She can read Yang better than anybody, knows her scars and smiles like a road-worn map, the kind with detailed schematics and three-dimensional ridges to indicate topography. But lately—

From outside the door, they hear a laugh—Ruby—followed by the screech of indignation—Weiss—then the stomp of footsteps down the hall, a half-trip, and another yell. Blake snorts.

“Who gave them sugar past 10 pm?”

Yang shrugs. “Ruby stole her party binder. That’s about when I took off.”

Blake turns her head, finds them suddenly close, nose to nose. “Should we go save her?

“I think I’d rather stay here.”

Blake can feel the damp-warm of Yang’s breath on her cheeks, the tickle of her hair against her shoulders. Blake always jokes that she can find Yang’s hair anywhere, even when she’s been away on contract for weeks. In the drain of her shower, in her clothes, caught in the bristles of her brush. In her bed.

Blake stares hard at Yang’s eyes, at the flecked gold of her iris, pale lavender darkening toward the pupil, the sullen blush of purple petals. Yang looks away first. Blake reaches out a hand, slides it into her hair, scratches blunt nails at her scalp until Yang’s eyes flutter closed.

“Didn’t you want to ask me something?”

Yang shakes her head without opening her eyes, nudging her skull harder into Blake’s touch, jaw tightening and releasing in a ripple of tension, stress ticking high in her temples. “Later.”

Blake knows to let things lie. Files it away for morning.

In the hall, Blake hears Weiss’s cry of victory, the low murmur of Ruby’s laughter. She settles deeper into the duvet, curling her legs into her body, wedging a foot in between Yang’s calves. Yang makes a small noise of protest, squirming.

“You’re feet are fucking ice.”

Blake laughs. “Warm them up then.”

Yang opens her eyes now, and the dark-drown of her pupil startles her. “Braid my hair?”

“Fair trade.”

They readjust, Yang sitting cross legged on the bed while Blake settles behind her. Yang leans back into sling of her hips, slumping low so Blake can reach her head. She grapples behind herself for one of Blake’s feet, pinches at her ankle, rubs warmth back into the sole. Blake gets momentarily lost in the bulge and ripple of Yang’s shoulder blades, the dramatic flats and valleys of her back.

She combs her fingers through Yang’s hair, smelling the heady citrus of her shampoo, that warm-musk at the back of her neck. She twists the strands into a ropy braid—wound gold, shot through with pale streaks bleached by lemon juice and the Menagerie sun. She buries her face there, just because, and Yang tenses in front of her.

When Yang speaks, her voice is a low-rough. It’s another territory Blake doesn’t quite recognize, a shift in landscape she isn’t sure how to navigate. “What are you doing, weirdo?”

“You’re warm.” Her lips buzz against Yang’s skin. She feels a flutter low in her stomach, a warm surge of something, like a reminder.

Yang hums a laugh. “You know I run hot.”

A lull. They settle for a moment, Yang leaning into her, Blake’s chin digging into her shoulder, before another shriek—louder this time—shatters the quiet. Yang groans, twisting in Blake’s hold unlooping her fingers from around the slim taper of Blake’s ankle. She leverages herself off the bed as quickly as she came, bouncing to her feet.

“I’m gonna go separate the children,” Yang says. She reaches her arms over her head, shoulders popping, groaning a stretch. “We still on for tomorrow morning?”

At her shoulders the braid begins to unwind. Waves of messy curls twist at her collarbone, framing her jaw, her brow, her temples, sweeping along her cheek. She arches into the stretch, muscles straining—hip cocked, arms bow-string tense—her hair a golden halo, near divine.

“Of course.” Blake reclines back onto the bed, lithe and dark against the plush snowfall of the duvet. She swipes absently for a paperback on her nightstand, cracks the spine open to the folded corner. Yang watches her. Her face doesn’t move, just her eyes, mouth flat and thoughtful.

Blake looks up from the page, already half lost in the swim of words, the story spinning in the white margin of her vision. “You good?”

Yang rubs at the back of her neck. “Great.” She takes a step toward the door, hesitates on the threshold. Half turns. “G’night, Blake.”

Blake doesn’t look up. Hums. “Goodnight, Yang. Love you.” She tilts her face up instinctually, waiting. Yang rolls her eyes, but pads back across the room.

She stops at the edge of the bed and presses a quick kiss against Blake’s offered cheek. “Love you, too. Sleep well.”

Yang turns and presses out into the hall without looking back. Blake pauses from the book long enough to flick her ears toward the door, hears the _thump-thump_ of Yang slamming down the stairs, hears Weiss shriek, then—“Yang no, God. Put me down!”

Cocooned in the close, dark comfort of the four post bed, Blake smiles.

**

The dreams come almost before she closes her eyes.

Blake fell asleep reading a romance novel. It was standard fare, something bawdy and paperback, picked up at an Atlesian bookstore. The cover frames the protagonists, a hero and damsel bowed together in a typical lovers’ embrace. Muscle bound and flexing, the hero cradles the damsel in a crooked arm.

“It’s regressive,” Yang would argue when she caught sight of it, “you of all people should know.” But that never stopped her from conducting dramatic readings when Weiss was in ear shot, enough to make her pale skin blush and burn. Enough that Blake would double over laughing in jelly-legged hysteria.

But tonight, as she sleeps, the novel clings to the flat of her tongue, to the inside of heavy eyelids, haunting her as the night drips like molten wax, puddling in liquid, scalding dreams.

There, in the dreamscape, she sees Yang. This is nothing new, Yang often surfaces here. But this time she’s wearing the sheer, billowing shirt of the Hero, fabric clinging to muscle and broad shoulders like wet silk.

Yang’s stance mirrors her stutter-stop in the doorway from earlier, hesitating on the threshold, liminal, intent. Her smile mimics that mysterious fey lilt, the one Blake doesn’t recognize, the one itching at the border of her consciousness, just off the edge of the map. World’s end. Here  
Be Dragons.

Yang crosses the room in the soupy, slowed footsteps of fantasy. Blake watches, unconscious, blurry. She tilts her cheek for a kiss, but catches Yang’s lips instead. Dream-Yang is warm, her mouth open and consuming and whole. Blake is rendered the Damsel in the curve of her elbow, back arched, her skin raw. She feels herself burning through, like a wick left lit, devouring herself to nothing.

Her fingers ache to touch, like it will kill her if she does, will kill her if she doesn’t. She pulls away, fragmented and reeling, expecting to find wild hair, blush-kissed lips and lavender. Instead there’s Yang between her legs, her spine and skin and bones knotting and unknotting, two hands of human flesh gripping her thighs, and her eyes, when she raises them, red and burning—

Blake wakes in a cold sweat, tangled in her blankets, the lamp at her bedside glowing. She bolts upright, finds her room empty and her cheeks flushed, sweat beading at her hairline and the small of her back. She swipes for the light and stifles the room in darkness, leaving herself muffled in a close, stinging guilt.

Her heart beats loud, impossibly close to the skin. She thinks you could the see the pulse of sinew from across the room, through the dark. Worse—she’s aching, fingers buzzing, her stomach taut with a muddle of longing and heat.

She exhales loud, her breath audible proof of life in the eerie mid-winter dark. Outside—beyond the frozen grounds, the spired city, the continent—the world tips in its arc, and the shortest day of the year begins.

Blake slips her hand under the band of her shorts, finds herself wet and swollen. She closes her eyes, finds Yang there.

Just this once.

She exhales again, presses her fingers firmly against herself, swallows a moan. This one time. It can’t hurt if no one ever knows.

**

Yang wakes with a weight on her chest.

She blinks her eyes open, bleary. Shards of winter sunlight spear through the gauzy curtains and she winces away from the glare. The world surfaces in fragments—the pearly Atlas landscape just beyond the drapes, snow adrift and drowning; the neon glow of the beside clock, 7:18 a.m.; the yellow eyes shining in the half-lit mid-morning, blinking slow.

Yang startles to clarity, heart racing. Blake is lying on top of her, fit in the sling of her hips. Smug. She wriggles her weight, digging her chin into Yang’s sternum. “Morning, sunshine.”

She’s got that slanted, predatory set to her mouth that Yang hates so well, her bangs falling long and dark in her eyes. She tilts her head to the side, mimes a bite at Yang’s neck, pushing her arms down hard until Yang is forced to bow into the impact with a grunt.

Yang’s voice is sleep-hoarse, her words a mono-syllabic rumble. “Bitch.”

Blake smiles, coy. She sits up from Yang’s chest, shifting to straddle her hips instead. Hands fist in Yang’s top and tug. “You promised.”

Yang cracks her jaw in a yawn, freeing her arm from the sheets to swipe at Blake half-heartedly. “I said I would go on a run with you, not that you could crush my ribs while I slept.”

From outside a shrill birdcall sounds, startling into the room like broken glass. Blake’s ears swivel toward the noise, but her attention stays steadfastly fixed on Yang. “You were supposed to meet me at the track by seven.” She lists a sideways glance at the clock, innocent. “Obviously, somebody overslept.”

Yang frowns. Blake has that little crease between her eyes that betrays a lie, and she cuts a glance at the space in the bed next to her, finds it indented. She runs her freed hand over the sheets, quirking a brow when her fingertips come away warm.

“Liar.” She grins. “You slept here didn’t you.”

Blake huffs and looks away. “None of your business.”

It’s a side effect of war: none of them sleep easy anymore. More nights than not, Yang wakes with Blake beside her. On the worst nights—the anniversaries of deaths, the new moons, the nights where the scars start to twinge—she’ll startle out of dreams to find Blake at her back, Weiss curled into her front, Ruby piled somewhere in the middle.

Yang lifts her arm, cradling Blake’s cheek in her hand and pinching at the blush staining her cheeks. “You’ve got to stop creeping into my room like some midnight phantom.” She splays her fingers wide and Blake presses into her palm, cheek smooshing. “People are going to get the wrong idea.”

Blake bounces her weight and flattens her hands over Yang’s collarbone. The movement shifts her hips against Yang in some sort of way, a low burn of contact, an off-brand bolt of pleasure. Yang swallows hard and hopes it doesn’t show. Blake’s fingers press over her bed-warm skin, her thumb resting in the notch of her neck, her fingertips settling against her wind pipe. A thinly veiled threat.

“Careful with those accusations.” She shifts again, ears twitching, and Yang stifles a noise at the friction. “If you haven’t noticed, I’m on top.”

Yang bares her teeth. “Are you?”

She arches her hips, knocking Blake off balance. Catching Blake with her legs, she twists. They grapple briefly, a mess of bedsheets and blankets, Blake’s hand tightening at her throat. They roll off the bed in a series of thumps and curses. Yang pivots to cushion the fall, grunting as Blake lands heavy on her chest. She uses to momentum to flip them, thighs bracketing Blake’s hips, forearm pinning Blake’s neck, hard enough that she can feel the reverberation of her heartbeat.

Blake’s fingers flex once at her throat and release, surrender. She slips her hand to Yang’s shoulder instead, digs her nails into flesh until Yang hisses an admonishment. Her pupils are round and dark, swallowing amber. Sharp teeth dig into her bottom lip until the plush gives and reddens.

Yang swallows a chortle of victory. “Not so smug now, huh?”

Blake just shrugs. “Got you out of bed, didn’t I?”

They are splayed out flat on the bedroom floor, sheets twisted around them. From here Yang has a clear view under the bed, at her half-unpacked luggage, spilling with unfolded clothes, her prosthetic discarded in a wad of dirty athletic wrap and briefs.

She releases Blake with a curse and rolls off her. “Shit.” Then. “Pass me my arm, would you.”

Blake wiggles under the bed to grab it and surfaces, amused. “You really should take better care of this priceless piece of equipment.”

Groaning, Yang sits up, rubbing at a quickly forming bruise where Blake’s pointy elbows caught her during their tussle. “It’s hardly priceless, I’m due for an upgrade.”

Shuffling toward her, Blake glowers. “If it’s a part of you, it’s priceless.”

Yang is momentarily struck dumb, cheeks pinking. Blake doesn’t even seem to register her blush, too busy positioning herself across Yang’s lap, brushing her hair over her shoulder. The hem of her t-shirt rides high, and Yang slips her arm around Blake’s waist, settles her more comfortably on her lap.

It’s an easy early morning ritual. One they haven’t honored in a long time. Blake runs her fingers along the residual limb, massaging knotted scar tissue, checking for signs of abrasion or blistering.

“Has it been hurting lately?”

“Nope.”

Blake hums. “Everything looks good.”

Yang grins, lopsided and sharp. She flexes. “You bet it does.”

Blake stifles a laugh, pushing at her chest. “You’re such an idiot.” She aligns the prosthetic with her shoulder, eases it into place. Yang winces as the nerves reconnect, human tissue molding seamlessly into the fitted socket, the arm whirring to life.

Yang makes a fist, releases. Wiggles each finger in turn. Raising her arm, she takes Blake’s chin between her fingers and pets her thumb down the crease in her bottom lip. “That hurt?”

Blake swallows. Shakes her head.

“Then we’re good.”

Blake wraps her hand around the buttery metal of Yang’s wrist, smooths the pads of her fingers along the ridged joints. It’s been so long now that the arm registers only as an extension of herself, as much as flesh, blood, and sinew. She swears she can feel Blake’s touch, can feel the thrill of her fingertips against her skin.

Yang tilts Blake’s chin down until their foreheads knock, Blake’s breath damp against her cheek. She strokes her fingers against Blake’s jaw, finds the familiar notch of the scar at her temple, rolls the stud of her eyebrow piercing under her thumb.

“You didn’t flinch,” she murmurs.

Blake nods into her, slides one hand back against her throat, framing her collarbone. “Because it’s you.”

A creak of a doorframe interrupts their reverie, followed by a familiar huff of annoyance.

Yang pulls back, looking up to find Weiss leaning through the doorway, brow knit, lip curled. She shakes her head pointedly before turning to call over her shoulder.

“I found them, Ruby!” She moves to face them as she delivers the next line. “In a shocking turn of events, they’re straddling each other on the bedroom floor.”

Ruby’s cackle comes from the hall, distant, like she’s a few floors down. Then, muffled: “Classic.”

Weiss tightens her pony, already turning to leave the room. “When you’re done fondling each other’s faces, we’re reconvening at the track in ten.”

Yang and Blake bust out laughing as soon as she disappears around the corner.

Blake says, “We’ve been summoned.”

Yang nods, still grinning. “I noticed.”

She stands, taking Blake with her. Blake squeals, her legs wrapping at Yang’s waist, Yang shifting her grip to palm her thighs. She grins, hefting Blake higher on her hips.

“Think I can get dressed like this?”

Blake mirrors her smile, throws her head back in a laugh. Yang feels her heart throb once, a flush of pleasure so keen she swears she can feel it all the way in the tips of her metal-alloy fingers.

She files it away as a problem for later. It can’t hurt if no one ever knows.

**

The Schnee Manor athletic suite is, as far as Blake is concerned, an affront to God.

“It’s just, like, so big.”

“Yeah it is,” Yang says, aiming a suggestive nudge at Weiss’s ribs. She reaches toward Ruby. Ruby winces, but delivers a lackluster high five.

Weiss pinches the bridge of her nose. “Can we just get to training.” She frowns at Blake. “And you know better than to give her an opening like that.”

Blake drifts toward Yang, shrugs, and hands her an elastic band. Wordlessly, Yang begins to knit Blake’s hair into a practical, low braid.

“If there’s a will, there’s a way,” Yang says. She ties off the braid, punctuates it with a smack on her ass. “I’m surprised it even registers anymore.”

Blake arches her back in a stretch. “To be honest, it doesn’t.”

Ruby leads them in a slow warm-up around the indoor track. Weiss falls into pace with her, while Yang and Blake lag behind. Blake steadies her breathing, enjoying the bone-deep burn as her muscles warm and lengthen, lavishing in the luxury of non-lethal training.

The track is small, a composite of rubber pellets and polyurethane that gives perceptibly under their strides. It loops the border of the gym, surrounding a collection of free weights and mats. The fighting arena is the central fixture, with a control panel for computer generated opponents, a mounted screen to measure aura levels.

Ruby and Weiss stop to stretch, but Yang matches Blake, pushing through a few more laps. Blake loves her like this: intent, focused. She runs in perfect form, hands held loosely, arms at 90 degrees, cutting from chin to hips. She stripped to spandex and a sports bra as soon as they entered the gym, and sometimes Blake really wishes she wouldn’t.

It’s just such a distraction. A platonic, Amazonian distraction.

Reflexively, stupidly, she thinks of her dream. Muscles rewritten under her fingertips, eyes like scripture, and a body that moves easy as pen strokes. She shakes her head fast, training her eyes straight ahead. Poems are pretty, liquid lies. Blake knows better.

Beside her, Yang jostles at her shoulder. “You wanna race?” She jerks her chin at the next straightaway, grins. “Winner gets to choose a handicap for the one-v-ones.”

Blake narrows her eyes. The straightaway is an easy 200 meters. Yang really should know better. “You’re on.”

“Starting now,” Yang yells. She pivots and takes off at a dead sprint.

Blake doesn’t waste breath protesting. She lengthens her strides, aims her focus at the back of Yang’s head. Yang’s chin dips as she pushes hard, exhales tearing ragged from her mouth. The sharp triangle of muscle at the base of her neck pulls taught, the flex of her calves dagger-sharp.

For a single, sympathetic second, Blake considers letting her win. But.

They pull even at the 50 meter mark, and Blake kicks in a final burst of speed, puffing her chest and hitting the finish a single stride before Yang does.

Yang staggers to a stop and they collapse there, at the finish line, together. Yang hacks out a laugh, wiping hard at her mouth with the back of her wrist. Blake groans, lowering herself to lie flat, tensing in a long, satisfied stretch. Rubber turf sticks to the wings of her back, leaving indentations in her flesh. They lay shoulder to shoulder, chests heaving. Yang is covered in a thin sheen, beaded sweat rolling down her abdomen, the veins of her forearm standing close to the skin. She sits up on her elbows, kicks her leg over Blake’s hip.

Her muscled thigh is heavy, sticky with perspiration, but Blake doesn’t protest. She loves the weight of her, the warm skin-on-skin. She flattens her palm against Yang’s calf, runs her fingers over the skin, massaging until Yang deflates with a groan.

“You won, asshole.” Yang says, even as she nuzzles closer. “Just put me out of my misery.”

Blake runs her hand up over her spandex, watching Yang tense, thighs flexing. She squeezes, curious, sees the muscles in Yang’s jaw pop. She raises her arm, rests her hand at Yang’s throat. Her fingers dimple the skin over the straining muscle of Yang’s neck, her thumb curled high under her ear.

Yang tilts her head higher, swallows, but doesn’t move away. Uncharacteristically, she humors the threat, quieting long enough for Blake to feel the stagger of her breath under her palm.

Blake watches her eyelashes shadow her cheek. Something like power drips to her stomach, feral, live enough to have a pulse. “I’ll keep you around for now.”

Only then does Yang bat away her hand, rolling onto Blake in a hug, pinning her to the turf.  
“Thank you, Oh Merciful One.” Her words buzz into Blake’s neck, and she feels Yang’s mouth carve into a smile against her skin. “You are so benevolent.”

Blake squirms under her weight. “And don’t you forget it.”

Yang pulls away too soon, bounces to her feet, seemingly recovered from whatever had given her pause. She raises her arms over her head and stretches until her spine pops. She grins down at Blake again, hair tickling her cheeks.

“How about round two?”

“As if you could handle it.” She takes Yang’s offered hand and lets her heave her onto her feet, squealing as Yang lifts her with practically no effort, their hands clasped between them, palm to palm.

Behind her, Weiss and Ruby are sparring in the arena, playful and half-speed. Weiss giggles every time Ruby throws an exaggerated punch, and it’s such a relief to see her like this – young and thawing, her smile pulling at her cheeks in an unfamiliar strain.

“Should we join them?” Blake asks, turning back to Yang.

Yang is already looking at her, eyes a liquid lavender-soft, their clasped hands tucked against her chest. She jars back to awareness when Blake meets her gaze, drops her hand like the skin had begun to burn.

“I call fighting you first,” Yang says. She’s already looking toward the ring, brow pinched. “Double or nothing.” She cracks her knuckles, grins. “Then we’ll see who comes out on top.”

Blake sighs and sighs and sighs, powerless with her, with them, watches Yang join the others in the ring, grappling Ruby into a headlock until she yells.

Yang looks up, catches her eye, gesturing with her free hand.

Helpless, Blake follows.

**

“Blake?” Weiss calls her name from the kitchen, a breathy pitch of panic. “Can you give me a hand?”

Blake rounds the corner, mid-yawn. She’s toweling her hair, ears flicking free droplets of water. Her post-workout muscles pull, sweet and sore, aura surging in a steady thrum under her skin.

“Of course,” she says, muffled around her yawn. “What’s up?”

Weiss is propped against the counter, one arm straining over her head. The lace hem of her dress brushes high on her thighs, and her cheeks are blushed rosy with the first signs of true hysteria. Her painstakingly assembled binder is open on the kitchen island, meticulous notes spilling free of the three rings in an overwrought scrawl.

There’s a few messy purple gel-pen doodles in the margin that Blake can only attribute to Ruby.

Weiss has that frantic look in her eyes, hair escaping her ponytail in a halo of frenzied wisps. “Can you reach the saucepan?”

Blake smiles. “Didn’t want to ask Yang, did you?” She reaches overhead and fetches the pan, settling it on the stovetop while Weiss sighs in relief.

“You know I’d never hear the end of it.”

“And Ruby?”

“She’d try to get me to do breathing exercises again.” Weiss slams a bag of flour onto the counter with enough force that a puff coats her pale cheeks even paler. She wipes at it absently with the back of her wrist, her free hand gathering an array of spices from the lower cabinet.

“She doesn’t understand,” —this punctuated by the bang of a molasses jar against the kitchen counter— “the integral traditions of the annual Schnee Yuletide ball.” She turns back to face Blake, frenzied. “Eggs.”

Blake wrinkles her nose. “Eggs?”

Weiss gestures hard in the direction of the fridge, looking for all the world like a small, angry conductor. “Eggs!”

“Oh!” Blake strides across the linoleum, abandoning her towel on a stray stool. “How many?”

Her head already buried in an open cookbook, Weiss answers. “Two.”

Blake digs through the industrial sized refrigerator, bypassing saran wrap covered trays of sliced fruit, tasteful canapés, and bottles upon bottles of champagne, until she finds the carton. She boosts herself to the counter top, legs swinging, and rolls the eggs between her palms thoughtfully. “What are you making?”

“Pfeffernusse.”

Ruby trips into the kitchen, arms piled high with her tool belt and a partly disassembled Crescent Rose. “Bless you.”

Blake hides her smile behind her hand as Weiss turns to face Ruby, splotches of pink stark against her cheeks. “It’s a spice cookie, Ruby, and if you ever listened when I talked you would _know_ that.”

Ruby dumps her armload onto the table, pinching the corner of her mouth tight. “I do listen when you talk. Why else would I be in the kitchen?”

Weiss pinches at the bridge of her nose. “I expressly told you not to bring your weapon in the house.”

In a rose-petal perfumed blur Ruby crosses the kitchen to lean beside her. She wraps her arms around her waist, buries her face in the crook of Weiss’s neck. Weiss tries to squirm away, but Ruby just tightens her hold.

“But if I didn’t, I wouldn’t get to help make the cookies. And I know it’s important to you.”

She nuzzles closer, and Blake hears the distinctive smack of a kiss against her cheek, watches as Weiss loosens, gives, warming under the sun-beam assault of Ruby’s attention. “It’s just—”

Ruby finishes her sentence. “—Winter isn’t coming to help set up this year, I know.” She turns to face Blake, keeping her arms fast around Weiss’s waist like a safety belt. “It’s Schnee tradition. They always used to bake these before the party—”

“—when we were kids,” Weiss finishes with a baleful sigh. She squints down at the recipe. “I just don’t remember there being so many fucking ingredients.”

Blake hops from her perch, deposits the eggs on the counter, and curls an arm around both of their shoulders. “Well, you’ve got all of us, now.” She peeks around Weiss’s head, resting her cheek against her temple. “How hard can it be?”

**

When Yang finds them, the kitchen is a designated disaster zone. All that’s missing is the yellow tape. Ruby has been banished to the far side of the prep counter, but she intermittently chimes with well-meaning advice.

“Put your hand in the molasses again, Weiss! That worked really well last time.”

Weiss and Blake are clustered around a large bowl, heads together. Yang pauses in the doorway, surveying them fondly. Blake’s hair is down and loose, still damp, cheeks pink with oven-heat and residual shower-blush.

She’s wearing a loose, black crop top, and Yang finds herself fixating on the winged-blades of her shoulder under the thin fabric, the slant of her hip against the kitchen island. Even the play of Blake’s fingers against the counter top, an aimless drum of her nails on the slate, has Yang captivated by the ripple of tendons under her skin.

Blake looks up, finds Yang watching, and her face opens into a smile. The corner of her eyes crinkle, cheeks dimpling, and Yang melts, liquid, languishing. “Hey, stranger.”

Yang risks a step forward. “Who let you three near a stove without supervision?”

“Well,” Blake reaches out, beckons Yang forward with a curl of two fingers. “Now we have you.”

“Yeah,” Weiss mutters, without looking up, concentrating on doling out a teaspoon of ground cloves into the flour and sugar, “the only flammable one. What a great addition.”

Blake bats at Weiss’s ponytail. “She’s just grumpy because this is her first time doing hard labor.”

Yang grabs for Blake’s outstretched hand, pulls her to her. It’s almost too easy, Blake caves immediately, let’s herself collide into Yang’s chest with an _oof_. Yang splays her fingers against her hips, calluses rough against the bare strip of skin between Blake’s top and ripped denim shorts. She digs her nails in, just enough to make Blake’s pupils flood.

“I remember my first time,” Yang says. Though she’s responding to Weiss, she keeps her eyes trained on Blake, lets her smile grow, all canine and tilt. “I’ll go slow.”

Blake throws her head back in a laugh, thumps a hit to Yang’s shoulder. “You’re an asshole.”

Yang catches at Blake’s hand, brings it to her mouth, and bites against her knuckles playfully. “Hey,” she says, aiming a pinch at Blake’s side, “I’m just trying to treat the girl right.”

Weiss does look up now, jabbing a finger in Yang’s direction, threatening to upset the bowl. “For the last time,” voice rising, nearly a yell. “I’m _not_ a virgin.”

Before Yang can responds, Weiss’s face goes slack, eyes wide. Her gaze is fixed somewhere behind Yang and Blake’s head, and they both turn to look.

Ilia is standing in the mouth of the doorway, her freckles flushed pink, a rosy glow radiating down her arm, bleeding blush to her fingertips. “Uh, noted?”

Blake breaks out of Yang’s hold, takes the kitchen in three strides, and wraps her arms around Ilia’s neck. “You made it.”

Ilia huffs a laugh, scooping an arm around Blake’s waist and squeezing, hard. They haven’t seen each other in months. Last Blake had heard, Ilia was elbow deep in legislative lobbying to severe Atlas’ lingering segregation clauses, their racial prejudice buried so deep in the city charter it took a team of lawyers to scrape it free.

Ilia snorts, peeking around Blake’s shoulder at Weiss, who has frantically buried her hands in the dough as though kneading with enough force will expel her outburst from the room.

“As if I’d miss a party,” Ilia says. Her spots pink again, a lighter shade this time, pale sunset. “Ballsy move, Schnee. Inviting leaders of the largest Faunus rights organization in Remnant to Atlas’ most exclusive bourgeoisie mixer.”

“It’s nothing like that,” Weiss fumbles. She gesticulates violently with her hands, sending tiny pieces of batter flying. “The Schnee Dust Company has made strides in recent years to repair the blight of racism that—”

Ilia crosses the room, effectively silencing Weiss’s tirade with a single finger, brushing across her cheek. “I know,” she says, quiet. “I’m just giving you a hard time.”

Weiss clamps her mouth shut an, her cheeks flame an unnatural red, comedically offset by her white hair.

Ilia smooths her fingertips again over her jaw. “You had some flour—”

Weiss, for once rendered speechless, only nods. Blake and Yang exchange an amused glance. Behind them, Ruby’s mouth settles into a peculiar frown.

Weiss moves to wipe her hands on a dish towel, rubs hard at her cheek. “Did Klein show you to the room where you’ll be staying.”

“I just got in,” Ilia says. She jerks her chin at her duffel abandoned in the doorway. “Haven’t even had the chance to loot the mansion.”

“Well, in that case—” Weiss smothers a smile, dropping the towel to the counter. “Let me show you the best places to start.” She shoots a glare at Blake and Yang who adopt twin expressions of innocence. “You two can finish up here.”

Yang pouts. “What about Ruby?”

Weiss shrugs. “I don’t know where she’s got to.”

Yang turns, finding Ruby’s seat abandoned, Crescent Rose still partly dissected on the counter, a cascade of rose petals drowning the empty stool. Blake pinches her lips tight with concern, watches Ilia and Weiss leave the room, shoulders brushing. Weiss clumsily offers to hold Ilia’s bag, and Ilia laughs her off, her hand settling onto the small of Weiss’s back.

“Huh,” Blake says. She absently dips her finger in the batter, licking it clean as they disappear around the corner. It’s gritty with granulated sugar, rich with honey, and the taste clings to her tongue. She squints her eyes with pleasure, goes back for more. “Y’know, these might just be salvageable.”

She looks up to find Yang watching, a little breathless. Her lips are parted in a careful, petal-pink bloom, and she’s got one hand buried in her own hair, holding the mess of curls over her shoulder.

Blake pulls her finger from her mouth with a pop. It comes away wet to the knuckle, and Yang’s eyes follow. Blake puts it back in the mixture, pulls it free, and Yang catches her wrist, looking pained.

“Stop putting your spitty finger in the batter,” she says. Her voice is strained, and she doesn’t release her hold. Her own hand dwarfs Blake’s slim arm, fingers wrapping easily around her wrist, long enough that they overlap, her palm broad and warm. Blake wets her bottom lip, not sure why the air feels suddenly thick, palpable.

She blames the oven heat, blames the close quarters of the kitchen, blames Yang stepping closer, lowering her head, and taking Blake’s finger past her lips.

Blake freezes, watches as Yang raises her eyes, looking at Blake through dark lashes, for permission, for reaction. She guides Blake by her wrist, takes her finger onto her tongue, against the scrape of her teeth. Closes her lips, sucks.

Blake whimpers audibly, and the noise breaks the spell. Yang pulls back and drops her wrist. She laughs, like the punchline of the joke was lost somewhere in translation.

“You’re right,” Yang says, turning away as she says it. “Not bad.”

Blake watches her retreat, tries to interpret the shift of muscle under her skin, her small smile as she wipes the abandoned dish towel along the flour coated counter. Blake’s face feels flushed, hot, and she’s never been more aware of the nerves in her finger, the aching pulse between her legs. She’s sure this is some sort of sick byproduct of her dream, of waking up in Yang’s bed.

“I think,” Blake says, hoisting herself back onto the counter, leaning back on her forearms. “That this is the part where you seduce me.”

Yang laughs. She steps into Blake’s space, lets her corral her between her dangling legs. “Blake,” Yang says, scratching her nails down the bare skin of Blake’s thighs. “I already know you’re a lost cause.”

Blake’s ears twitch, and she wrinkles her nose. “Oh?”

“I’ve been trying to seduce you for years,” Yang says.

Blake laughs. “You’re so full of shit.”

Yang laughs, too, like they’re in on the same joke, although Blake thinks she lost the thread of humor somewhere about the same time that Yang took her finger into her mouth.

“We should get these in the oven,” Yang says, with a sideways glance at the batter. “Before the guests start to arrive.”

Blake crosses her ankles behind Yang’s hips, pulls her closer into a messy mockery of a hug, buries her face in her neck. Yang’s hands settle high on her waist, squeeze.

“What’s wrong, weirdo?”

“Weiss invited so many people.” Blake groans. “And we’re going to have to, like, talk to all of them.”

Yang laughs, pulling back until they are nose to nose. Blake goes a little cross-eyed trying to count Yang’s freckles, finding the gold that bleeds into the lilac of her iris.

“Not in the mood to socialize?”

“Never.” Blake frowns. “Stuffy Atlesian politicians and their ilk isn’t exactly my idea of a good time. I’ve spent the better part of my lifetime actively lobbying against them.”

Yang pulls a face and steps back, dragging her hands down to Blake’s thighs and petting a careful touch. Placating. Blake narrows her eyes. She knows the guilty expression scrawling itself across Yang’s features, knows this is always a precursor to –

“Speaking of,” Yang says. She clears her throat. “I need to ask you a favor.”

“Oh good.”

“You remember Winter?”

“I do.” Blake narrows her eyes. This was going nowhere good fast. Putting Winter and Yang in the same room was like throwing gasoline and a lit match onto a pile of dry wood – it was only a matter of time before everything in the vicinity turns to ash. “Does this have anything to do with what you wanted me to ask me earlier?”

Yang bites at her bottom lip. “Maybe.”

Blake throws up her hands, and twists out of Yang’s hold, sliding off the counter. Yang stops her with a hand around her wrist, tugs until they are again face to face.

“We just had a little bet going.”

Blake flattens her hand against Yang’s chest, pushes her away. “Last time you two had _a little bet going_ we ended up waking up in the back room of a Vacuo casino, a thousand lien short, and wearing engagement rings.”

Yang’s stares off into the distance, somewhat dreamily. “We never did find out who we were engaged to.”

Blake snaps her fingers. “Yang, focus.”

Yang turns to her back to her, clasps her hands. “This won’t turn out like last time, I swear.” She tosses her hair over her shoulder, and Blake is briefly distracted by the curve of her neck, by her smile, one side pulling roguishly higher than the other. She’s turning on the charm. Blake’s seen her play this game enough times with enough women that she really shouldn’t be effected, but –

“She was just really, really getting under my skin.”

“As usual—”

“—and she said I would never manage to hold down a girlfriend, and one thing led to another—”

“And?”

“And I may or may not have told her that I was seeing someone.”

“Someone?”

“You, specifically.”

Blake exhales, feels her stomach flip. Her heart beats, twice, out of time.

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not.” Yang’s smile softens. She gets that look again, a little dizzy, a little star-struck, and tips her chin down until she meets Blake’s eyes. “It’s only for tonight.” She cups Blake’s waist. "If we can pull it off, she owes me double what we lost during the, I'll admit, somewhat ill advised gambling fiasco in Vacuo."

Yang’s hand dwarfs Blake’s slim hips, fingers slipping under the edge of her crop top, hitting skin. She strokes, once, with her thumb, fingertips finding the mark that mars her abdomen.

The scar is almost fully faded, a pale white criss-cross, a reminder of blade and bone and so many lost nights. Of Yang halved and crumpled beside her, the ghost of their trauma doubling and flashing in her shadow.

“Is it so hard to believe?”

Blake laughs, a lilting breathy thing. “No one is going to buy it. I mean Weiss is _right there_.”

Yang drops Blake’s waist to press her hand over her mouth, smothering a cackle. “Shut the fuck up.”

“No, really,” Blake says, words muffled around Yang’s palm. “You two would make such a cute couple.”

Yang narrows her eyes, grabs for her. Blake dodges out of her hold, rounds the kitchen island. Yang tenses on the opposite side, arms braced against the slate counter-top.

“Get over here, you little monster. Take it back.”

“It’s the perfect solution: you get a fake long term girlfriend _and_ you get the added bonus of rubbing it in Winter’s face that you’re fucking her sister.” Blake smirks, smug, before she sees Yang’s eyes flash red.

Yang vaults the counter easily, and wrestles Blake into a loose embrace. This time, Blake lets her win.

“How dare you suggest that I would fake sleep with anyone but you.”

Blake goes limp in her hold, and Yang scoops her up around her waist, tucking her in the crook of her arm. Too late, Blake realizes it is the exact pose from her dream. Yang stares down at her and—there it is again: her eyes like the edge of a map, smile like the North Star.

“Will you do it?” she hushes, quiet. Her breath falls warm on Blake’s cheek.

Blake swallows, hard. “I’ll do it.”

There’s a moment of thick tension, a syrupy molasses ache. The oven beeps, fracturing the silence. It’s only the two-toned notes indicating that the oven is preheated, but it might as well be the siren wail signaling a four-alarm fire.

Yang grins, mouth breaking into a goofy tilt. Blake scowls, trying to wriggle away from the tension, from the weight of Yang’s hand at the small of her back.

Then, worse, Yang leans down and kisses her, firmly, at the corner of her mouth. “Thanks, Blake.”

She releases her abruptly, goes to dig cookie sheets out of the cupboard, her back to Blake, whistling softly through her teeth.

Blake stills on the other side of the counter, a world apart. Her mouth throbs, the ghost of the kiss a haunting, one stolen from her dream.

Across the house, Weiss shows Ilia to her bedroom, fumbling a light touch against her wrist. Levels below, Ruby runs fast, hard laps, head down, on the synthetic track. Outside, snow falls thickly on Atlas soil, trussing the cold ground in a blanket of frost. The night of Yule is all but arrived, and the veil thins and strains.

Here, now, in the kitchen, Blake watches Yang stretch to her tip toes, wrestling oven mitts from a top shelf. She turns to catch Blake watching and throws her a smile.

Blake stays there for a minute longer, frozen. For the first time, in an entire life of running, of drawing maps in pages of books to guide her way home, Blake feels totally and completely lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh no, i wonder what's going to happen next ;))) come find me on tumblr @nevervalentines if u think u have an idea


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> took me so long to write this that it's finally seasonally appropriate again. that should tell u everything u need to know.

Weiss has been fussing with the same strand of tinsel for all of ten minutes and Ruby watches on, amused.

Around them, caterers and staff bustle through the foyer, carrying trays of freshly buffed drinkware, polish fogging as the hot glass meets the air from the gaping front doors. Three hours out from the start of the ball, crisp white button-downs are untucked, the tail of their dress shirts hanging over the waist of pressed, black slacks.

Weiss spares the room a despairing glance. “Look at it, it’s a complete mess.”

Ruby isn’t sure if she’s referring to the state of the staff uniforms or the decorations, so she settles on the safe answer.

“It looks good,” Ruby says. She takes a step forward and tugs at Weiss’s elbow. “It all looks really good.”

They stand at the foot of the main staircase, glossy marble steps sweeping toward the massive mahogany entrance. Security stands on either side of the breach, stamping their feet to stay warm, ushering staff back toward the kitchen and ballroom.

Enormous ivy wreaths adorn each door, red holly bleeding down the glossy leaves amid sutures of cinnamon sticks and pinecones. It almost reminds Ruby of the wreaths she and Yang used to make in front of the fireplace when they were kids, only theirs weren’t professionally arranged by an exclusive florist in the swank of downtown Atlas.

Ruby slides her hand to the small of Weiss’s back, tucking her into her side. “Stop fussing, you’re making the caterers nervous.” This draws a small laugh, and Ruby grins. “I think you already made one guy cry.”

Weiss smothers her smile under her palm. “Please, he was fine.”

The banister of the staircase is laced with fresh sprigs of evergreen and fine, crystalline tinsel, teardrop-shaped crystals dripping over the polished wood, glinting among the traditional Yule fare.

“Y’know, these remind me of the solstice decorations Yang and I used to make,” Ruby says.

Weiss turns to her, eyes wide and hopeful. “Yeah?”

Her mouth looks so breakable, Ruby could almost cry. She hasn’t dressed for the party yet, wearing an overlarge pullover that Ruby suspects belonged to Blake at one point, hands tucked inside trailing sleeves, chin ducking into the puckered collar.

“Yeah,” Ruby says. “Though ours were made of, like, paper. Not actual crystal.”

“It’s faux crystal, Ruby,” Weiss says, appalled. “My God, what do you think of me?”

They bust out laughing at the same time, and Weiss burrows deeper into Ruby’s side, nuzzling under her chin. Ruby tucks her hand into the swathes of fabric at Weiss’s waist, feels her shudder a sigh under her palm.

“The party hasn’t even started,” Weiss says. “And I’m already just so tired.”

“It will be over before you know it,” Ruby says.

Weiss tilts her head to look at her, brow crinkled with annoyance, pale eyebrows pulling taught. “Ruby, it’s literally the longest night of the year.”

Before Ruby can answer, Weiss spots a familiar figure across the lobby. She turns toward the ornate entrance, and puckers her lips in thinly veiled amusement.

“Look who it is.”

Ruby follows her gaze, barks a laugh. “That didn’t take long.”

Yang is leaning in the open doorway, arms crossed. Despite the frigid night, frost creeping across the ground and numbing the hard earth of the front gardens, she’s still wearing a sleeveless workout tee, chatting nonchalantly with the head of security.

He’s a wall of a man in a well-tailored black suit, an earpiece spiraling down the shell of his ear, broad shoulders bristling under the tight fabric.

Even with his added bulk, Yang matches him in height. Her chin juts forward as her eyes glance around the frozen courtyard.

Weiss rolls her eyes. “Ten minutes and she’s already hounding security about their safety protocols.”

Ruby laughs. “How much do you want to bet that she just offered to ‘run the perimeter?’”

“Oh, please,” Weiss rocks forward on her toes and narrows her eyes at the duo, as if she can read their lips from across the grand foyer. “I bet they’re swapping protein shake recipes.”

From the doorway, Yang tosses her hair over one shoulder, shakes it out down her back. She offers her hand for a shake, canines glinting at the corner of her smile. The man reciprocates the gesture, and their hands meet, squeeze once, firm. The muscles in Yang’s arms ripple in response — the veins in her forearms stand taught against the skin, and the triangles of muscle in her shoulder bulge.

“Disgusting,” Weiss says. She’s giggling again, the breath of it hot against Ruby’s cheek. “She’s such an overprotective big sister.”

Ruby sighs happily. “Yeah, she’s the best.”

Yang turns away from the doorway and spots them across the room. She tosses them a toothy grin and begins to pick her way through the bustle of caterers and staff, shaking off the cold as she goes, pink-cheeked and pleased.

“Good guy,” Yang says when she’s in ear shot. “Seems like his team’s got it handled.”

Ruby chokes back a laugh while Weiss rubs her palm hard over her brow. “I would hope so, Yang. It’s not like I hired the best security available in the Atlas private sector, or anything.”

Yang slings an arm round Ruby and Weiss’s shoulders, squeezing them into her chest for matching side hugs. “Hey, I gotta keep my girls safe.” She ducks her head to knock her brow against Ruby’s, brushing her smile across the bridge of her nose. “Just like you guys do for me.”

Ruby wriggles happily and Weiss’s cheeks pink, darting out a slim hand to pinch at Yang’s hip.

“Yeah, yeah, go team RWBY, and all that,” she says dismissively, but Ruby catches the smile she hides under a dour pout.

Then, from above. “Was I not invited to this group bonding session, or am I off the team?”

The three tilt their chins up and find Blake lounging over the staircase banister, chin pillowed on folded arms. Her lips turn down in an exaggerated frown, but at the crown of her head, her ears are tilted forward, amusement clear in her soft drawl.

Even unattuned, not connected by battlefield adrenaline and necessity, Ruby can feel Yang’s energy spike and simmer.

“You kicked my ass pretty bad in practice today,” Yang says. She steps forward, curling her fingers in the tinsel of the balustrade, eyebrows arching. Beside her Weiss bristles, watching the decorations muss, unhappily. “We voted you off the island.”

Blake unfolds from her slouch and smoothly springs over the banister, dropping to the polished marble floor. She lands on her feet.

Weiss pinches the bridge of her nose. “Could we maintain some decorum, please?”

“I don’t know the meaning of the word,” Ruby says. At Weiss’s glance — “I really don’t.”

Yang makes a grab for Blake, catching at the hem of her shirt, reeling her in like a fish on a line. Blake folds happily into the hug with only a small noise of faux-protest. Yang buries her face in Blake’s hair, carefully avoiding her ears.

Muffled, she says, “You smell like cookies.”

Blake noses into the groove of Yang’s neck. “Yeah, because somebody got batter in my hair.”

Yang pulls back far enough to meet Blake’s eyes. She scans her quickly, toe to brow. It’s a familiar routine for the team, constant check-ins, a practiced back-and-forth reassurance.

“You good?” she asks.

Blake softens, putty-pliable. “I’m good.”

Beside them, Weiss huffs. Yang releases Blake and turns toward her, hand cocked on her hip.

“Jealous, Weiss?”

“Hardly.”

But Yang scoops a grumbling Weiss under one arm, and Ruby watches the rosebud stain of Weiss’s frown blossom into a laughing, pitched squeal of protest. Blake wraps her arms around Yang’s neck, hitching her legs up to circle her waist, grappling for a hold on Weiss’s baggy sweatshirt. Ruby takes a running, hop-leap and lands on Yang, clinging in a sloppy piggy-back.

Yang groans, drowning under the combined weight, and begins to wade forward slowly, taking long exaggerated steps.

“I’m throwing you all in the chocolate fountain,” Yang says.

Blake laughs, soft and breathy, the sound lost in Ruby’s incredulous reply.

_“Chocolate fountain?”_

**

Steam curls over the top of the bathroom door, condensing around the doorframe like dew, the plaster sweating beads of water. All five of them have consolidated in Weiss’s suite to get ready for the party. The plush comforter is piled high with discarded outfits and Weiss’s closet doors are thrown wide, makeup strewn across the vanity.

The air in the bedroom is heavily perfumed and damp, the product of consecutive showers, a dozen different kinds of shampoos, body washes and — in Blake’s case — organic soap.

“How can soap be organic,” Ruby says warily, eyeing the packet. “Is she, like, planning on eating it after?”

“It’s not _edible_ ,” Weiss says, scoffing. Then, upon closer consideration of the box. “Well, actually — ”

Ilia sidles up behind her, leans over her shoulder. “Planning on trying a bite?” She pauses just shy of touching her, her hair rippling red. “Been saying something dirty?”

Weiss ducks away, sputtering some variation of a reply while Ruby pulls a face, tossing the box behind her. She turns against the outside of the closed bathroom door and bangs on it helplessly.

“Please hurry up, guys.” Her voice is pitched even higher than usual, and she flattens her face against the glossy wood. “It’s been forever, what are you even _doing_ in there?”

Inside the bathroom, Yang grins. Ruby’s plea is muffled from outside, but it’s enough for Yang to get the gist. She swings her legs from her countertop perch, peeks a look at the shower curtain beside her.

It’s nearly opaque, but she can just make out the shape of Blake through the gauzy sheet. The steady fall of water changes rhythms as Blake ducks out of the stream, fumbling for one of the bottles resting on the lip of the tub.

“Yang,” Blake says. She reaches an arm out from behind the curtain and Yang watches water drip to the tile floor with a sickening interest. “Can I use your shampoo?”

Yang clears her throat. “Of course.” She rescues the bottle from the counter, slips it into Blake’s waiting hand. Her skin come away wet where they touch, and she regards her glistening fingers curiously. Rubs them together. “You should hurry, though. I think Ruby is getting tired of watching Ilia try to finger Weiss.”

“God, Yang.” Blake laughs from behind the curtain. Yang hears the plastic catch of the shampoo bottle, hears Blake murmur contently. She closes her eyes tight, dips her chin down to her chest. Inhale. Exhale.

“Am I wrong?”

Blake laughs again. “Unfortunately not.” A dull thud as she sets the bottle down, the wet slide of shampoo in her palms.

Yang cracks open one eye, turns again to the curtain. Blake’s silhouette raises her arms over her head, runs her hands through her hair. Yang’s grip tightens on the countertop.

“Are you jealous?”

Blake hums quietly. Behind the curtain, her figure stills. “Why do you ask?”

Beneath Yang’s hand the porcelain spider-webs into a series of cracks. “Just curious.”

The shower head sputters to a stop and Blake’s shadow shifts, lithe. Yang can hear the drip of water off of her skin, heat rolling in buttery waves from behind the parted curtain. “Towel, please.”

Yang slides off the counter and hands a towel over the top of the shower rod silently.

Blake takes it and, after a beat, the shower curtain slides open.

They face each other like that, Blake still standing in the shallow basin of the tub, soft, lavender terry cloth wrapped around her chest, the hem skimming the tops of her thighs. Her hair is a mess of damp waves, dripping water onto her shoulders, beading in the dip of her collarbone. Her cheeks are flushed blush-pink from the steaming water, and the peaks of her shoulders, her knees, the cliff of her knuckles, are rosy with heat.

Yang stands, helpless. She stripped off her tank top in preparation for her own shower. And though Blake is the one technically not wearing any clothes, Yang has never felt so laid bare.

“No,” Blake says, quiet. “I’m not jealous.”

Yang scrapes her hair over her shoulder, mussing it into a tangle of curls. “Okay.”

Blake steps out of the slick tub, steadies herself with a damp hand on Yang’s arm. Yang overcompensates, catching at her waist over the thin fabric of the towel, holding her firm. Blake leans into the touch. With Blake in bare feet and Yang still in boots, Blake only comes up to her chin. She seems so small like this, all willowy curves and bright eyes. Her ears flick water free, and flatten back into her hair when they draw Yang’s gaze.

She tips her head forward, resting her forehead against Yang’s chest. When she speaks, her voice is muffled, breath condensing on Yang’s bare skin over the scoop-neck of her sports bra. “Is this you being a protective fake girlfriend?”

Yang sighs, splays her hands wide on Blake’s hips, resting her chin between her ears.

“No, I’m just worried that Weiss is off the market.”

Blake spits a laugh, pulling away to thump a hit against Yang’s shoulder. “You ass.”

“What?” Yang catches her up tighter. The towel threatens to slip, but the peril dulls in comparison to Yang’s grip around her waist. “Ilia is totally trying to put it in.”

Blake groans. “I really wish you wouldn’t say it like that.”

“She looked, like, ten seconds away from eating Weiss out at the kitchen table.”

“Oh, I _really_ wish you wouldn’t.”

“Hmm?” Yang slides her hand into Blake’s wet hair, cups the back of her neck with firm fingers. She watches Blake’s eyes flutter closed, fixates on the perfect bow of her top lip. “Am I offending your delicate sensibilities?”

Blake looks up at her from under her lashes. “Yang,” she says, a little patronizing, a sudden sultry low. Yang feels the syllable in her gut, between her legs. It’s all she can do not to groan.

Blake bites at her lip, fitting her arms around Yang’s neck. Without the pinch of her elbows to hold it in place, the towel drops a few inches, catching low on her chest. Yang whines a high noise of surprise, her eyes shoot to the ceiling. She can feel all the heat in the close, sauna-like quarters rush to her cheeks.

“Um.”

Blake laughs, pressing herself fully up against her. Her wet skin stains Yang’s clothes in dark splotches of water. She can feel the press of Blake’s chest, her hips, against the length of her body.

“Since when am I the virtuous one?” Blake asks.

Yang still has one hand at her neck, another at her waist, and they both tighten. Her broad grip palms at Blake’s hip over the soft fabric, the pressure keeping the towel in place.

Yang opens her mouth, searching for an ill-timed quip, banter, anything that can smother the heat of Blake under her palms, the well of longing that threatens to drown her from the inside out.

She wonders if this is penance for what she has asked. A punishment for robbing closeness from willing hands.

“What is this, like, your villain origin story?” Yang says finally, after the silence has stretched long enough that a crinkle has surfaced between Blake’s eyebrows. “Is this the part where you strangle me with floss while I’m distracted?”

The inflection pales under the bright lights, but Blake still smiles, wriggles a little in her grasp.

“Does this distract you?” Blake asks, curious.

Yang stares so hard at the ceiling it’s lucky the plaster doesn’t begin to burn. Between them, the fabric of the towel shifts.

Clearing her throat, Yang says, “Um. No.”

In her peripheral she senses the motion of Blake raising her arm, feels her fingers cup her jaw. Blake arches to tiptoe, brushes her lips against the shell of Yang’s ear. Says, “Get out of here before you see something you can’t handle.”

Yang flees.

**

“Like you’ve never seen me naked before,” Blake says.

She’s found Yang where she retreated, tucked in an alcove in one of the upper bedrooms. The room is long abandoned, sheets stripped from the bed, errant cobwebs clinging to the outdated, art-deco furniture that clutters the suite.

Unlike the more trafficked wings, this floor has escaped the reign of Weiss’s brief affair with modern architecture – a phase that doused the lower bedrooms in marble finishes and ivory accents.

Though all the lights in the manor are long electric, the hanging fixtures in the bedroom are designed to mimic oil lamps. The filament flickers and spits, amber light pooling on the thick, patterned rug.

Yang sits cross legged on the floor, using her reflection in a glass-paneled chest of drawers to pin her hair away from her face.

Blake leans in the doorway. Yang’s image fractures and doubles in the irregularly mirrored panels, and Blake catches her gaze eight times over, lilac eyes blinking slow.

Yang is still wearing one of Weiss’s silk robes, hasn’t yet donned her dress for the party, but her skin is buffed and moisturized, and the twisting up-do she is fashioning out of twined braids of golden hair is more intricate then her everyday faire.

The robe rides high on her thighs, tight across her shoulders and arms. Blake can smell her lotion from the doorway, buttery and rich.

Blake risks a step closer, ducking into the light.

“Are you mad at me?” Her voice sounds small, even to herself, and she twists her hands at her waist. Even now, even after years of repair, of knitting herself back together, she still feels that spark of fear at strained silence. At the lull that precedes the lashing, at the calm-quiet of anger.

The question seems to jar Yang from her melancholic lapse, and she looks up, fully, at Blake. Her face softens, opens, like a flower turning into the sun.

“No, of course not.” Yang’s words are muffled around the bobby-pins pinched at the corner of her mouth and she drops them into her palm, sheepish.

Blake stays fixed in the center of the room, watching her own shadow sway against the far wall in the flicker of faux-candlelight.

Yang’s brow cracks, furrows, and she reaches out to Blake, palm up. “Baby, no. Come here.”

Blake tiptoes closer, kneels to Yang’s level. Yang looks at her seriously, fits two fingers at her jaw.

Voice firm, she says, “Don’t ever apologize for flashing me.”

Blake’s laugh bubbles out of her, and Yang grins at the sound of it, eyes sparking. She waves a hand in the air before them, like she’s clearing invisible cobwebs, brushing away fine silk with fingertips.

“I’ve been letting Weiss tell me all her old Yule stories. I let them get in my head, I guess.” Yang squints her eyes into the wardrobe mirror, pins a final lock of hair in a complex twist over her ear. She seems pleased with how it falls, and turns back to Blake, her full attention on her now.

“Summer always loved those kinds of stories. Magic, fairytales.” She wiggles her hand in the air again, letting her voice drop into a husky whisper. “Little girls straying from the path into dark, dangerous woods.”

Blake hums, interested. “Tell me one?”

Yang pinches her mouth in a smile, pleased. “Maybe if you’re good.”

The beam of Yang’s attention is so much, so bright, that Blake feels she’s drowning in it. Sometimes she can’t even stand to look at her, like she’s squinting into the sun, the rest of the world shadows in her peripheral.

“Don’t think you’re forgiven for earlier.” Yang scrunches her face into a pout, bottom lip pursed. “You used my vulnerability against me.”

Blake laughs, presses close into Yang’s side. “And what’s that?”

Yang shrugs. “Your body. It’s my only weakness.”

“You’re such a flirt,” Blake says.

“Hey, you’re the one dating me,” Yang says.

Blake jars. She had almost forgotten. She feels Yang’s hand at the small of her back, the sunbeam-heat of her affections, and wonders how much of the last few minutes have been pretend.

“Right,” she says. She shuffles back on her shins. “We still have to lay the ground rules for your ridiculous scheme.”

Yang groans. “Let me do my makeup first.” She produces her cosmetics bag from the ground beside her, the growl of the zipper loud in the quiet room. She sifts through it with a groan.

Blake rolls her eyes. Slowly, she crawls into Yang’s lap, hovers over her in a straddle. It’s a little predatory, a little slinky, just for the benefit of Yang’s breath catching in the back of her throat.

Beneath her, Yang stills, long used to the routine, one fine-tuned during years of partnership, prepping for nights out, as ritual as Blake helping to align her prosthetic.

As many times as she’s done this – clambered onto Yang’s lap to hold her still, to ground her – Yang always touches Blake like it’s the last.

Snatching the makeup bag from her hand with a huff, Blake frames Yang’s cheek with her fingers.

“Let me do it. We know you’re garbage.”

“Hey,” Yang yelps. “We don’t all spend thirty minutes in the mirror every morning perfecting our winged eyeliner.”

Blake glares. “Well, I don’t use three different kinds of conditioner, so I think it’s a fair trade.”

Yang holds up her mechanical hand, flexing each finger in turn. The pout is back, and Blake fixates briefly on the pillowy jut of her bottom lip.

Her mind drags back to her dream, involuntary, like the impulse to sift your hands through dry rice, to close fingers over a smooth pebble, to be held. Animal, instinct. She wants to bury herself in the sensation until it renders her numb to the pleasure of it.

For a moment, she sees herself taking the lip into her mouth, biting down until it bruised.

“You know I never mastered applying make-up with my prosthetic,” Yang says. The words jar Blake away from the murky fog of _almosts_ , and she shifts on Yang’s lap, feels the warm flex of her under her thighs. “I don’t think the intricacy of eyeliner is really what Ironwood had in mind.”

Yang fits two hands on Blake’s hips, palms warm through the thin fabric of her slip. It is not helping. It is decidedly not helping.

The dream shivers against her skin like silk, the whisper of sense-memory dragging low in her stomach like a pulse.

Yang is looking at her like she’s expecting a quip back. Blake’s mind struggles to catch up.

She reaches into the bag, draws out the kohl pencil and rolls it between her palms, letting the sensation ground her.

“You’ve seen how Ironwood’s eyes pop,” she says, clearing her throat. “I think that’s exactly what he had in mind.”

Dimpling, Yang’s chin-lips-cheeks blossom into a smile. The soft skin around her eyes wrinkles, laugh lines creasing. She loves it when Blake plays along. The first time Blake cracked a pun, she thought Yang was going to pee herself.

Blake cups Yang’s chin in her palm. “Now, stay still,” she hushes. The casing of the eye shadow opens with a snap.

Yang obeys, complacent. Only her thumbs move, rubbing small circles on the jut of Blake’s hipbones.

Then – “Close your eyes.”

Again, Yang obeys. Her face is solemn under Blake’s ministrations. It’s about as still as Blake ever sees her.

Around them, the room hums to life. The boiler kicks on in a distant basement, and the vents cough and rattle, warm air playing dust through the light in silky motes.

Blake applies the make-up in careful sweeps, dabbing powder out of the circular cases with precise motions. She takes time to study Yang with a rare openness, without bright eyes looking back, seeing her, seeing through her.

It’s nearly impossible to take her in all at once, like blinking away daylight after stepping from a dark doorway, like the sunlight-squint of early August. Blake consumes her in fragments instead; the careful weave of golden hair, darker at the roots, the notch of her upper lip, the blond down of her eyebrows, the tremble of her eyelids.

Beneath the fragile skin, Yang’s eyes move like she is dreaming. Her mouth curves up at the corners, and she wrinkles her nose as the fine horse-hair bristles of the brush meet her cheeks.

“Hold still,” Blake says, uselessly, tongue thick. Docile, Yang’s fingers still at her hips.

Yang’s chin is tilted up, the arch of her neck blood-warm and fluttering. It’s trust, full and complete, her throat bared, her breath low and even.

Blake frames Yang’s neck with her left hand, can feel the ladder-rung-ridge of her windpipe under the tendon of her palm.

Yang laughs lowly, and Blake feels the hum of it reverberate up her arm.

Eyes still closed, she asks, “What are you doing?”

Blake tightens her hand slightly, curves her fingers until she dimples flesh. “Feeling you,” she says, quietly.

Yang makes a vague noise of disinterest, lolls her head back further, arching her neck into Blake’s palm. The tendons strain, and muscles in her jaw pop and ripple.

“Okay.” Blake feels her swallow. “But make it fast. Weiss is going to skin us if we’re late.”

Blake pulls her hand away, wills her pulse to slow. She reaches back into the bag, removes a small brass tube. “Almost done, anyway.”

At the sound of the lipstick uncapping, Yang parts her lips obediently, eyes still closed. Blake paints it across her bottom lip, then the top.

It’s a dusky red, and the pigment smooths the creases in her bottom lip, paints her into storybook colors – bold, intentional, larger than life.

“Okay,” Blake says. She caps the lipstick. “You can open your eyes.”

Yang blinks them open slow, and Blake watches her pupils waver, dilate, shrinking until they focus on her, near cross-eyed. She seems surprised by how close they are, nose to nose, and grins, leans back. Absently, her fingers flex against Blake’s waist.

“How do I look?”

Blake schools her features into studious disinterest. “Good.” She gestures at Yang’s mouth, starts to reach for a square of tissue paper. “But you need to blot.”

Yang releases her hip and catches at Blake’s wrist instead. She brings it to her mouth, presses a long kiss against the skin there, just over the pulse.

Her mouth leaves a perfect, scarlet print.

“There.” Her smile widens, all smug and canine. “Blotted.”

Blake cradles her wrist in her free hand, swipes absently at the stain with her thumb. It leaves the pad of her fingertip bruised with a deep rouge. It jars her to see the mark there, proof of Yang’s kiss, marring her, burning through her.

Yang tilts back onto her palms, Blake still firmly fixed in her lap. “Ground rules?”

Blake perks. “Right,” she rubs her hands together as Yang watches on, amused. “What’s our end goal here?”

Yang holds up three fingers, ticks them off one by one. “Make money. Get drunk. Rub our victory in Winter’s stupid face.”

Blake snorts. “That’s just, like, an average Friday night for you.”

Yang throws her head back, laughs. “You’re damn right.”

The motion catches in Blake’s periphery, and she turns her head to find them reflected back in the mirrored paneling of the bureau that Yang was using to fix her hair. She studies their reflections – Yang’s lap slotted between her thighs; her own bare shoulder, the thin spaghetti strap of her cami threatening to slip; Yang in profile, the strong line of her nose, bridge slightly crooked from too many poorly-set breaks.

Even from a distance, a pale web of scars can be seen, starting under Yang’s ear and disappearing past the neckline of her robe. Souvenirs from the war. Blake feels her own scars twinge in sympathy, phantom pain.

On cold nights, after long stretches of rainy days, Blake’s right arm will ache at the socket. Sometimes she catches Yang rubbing hard at the flesh of her lower abdomen, wincing despite apparently unblemished skin.

She’s always felt Yang’s pain like a ghost of her own. Figures it’s just another partner thing.

Yang follows her eye line. Catches her eye in the reflection. Winks.

“What are you looking at?”

Blake shrugs, watches her double’s shoulders move. Up, down. “Think we can pass as a couple?”

It’s Yang’s turn to shrug. “We’ve been partners for so long. Is it really any different?” She reaches for Blake’s chin, pinches it gently between her thumb and forefinger, tilting Blake back toward her. “Would it be so hard to fall in love with me?”

She’s got that look again, a little unfamiliar, shadowed, something haunted in the space behind her eyes.

Blake dips her head to nip at Yang’s fingers, ignoring the jolt between her legs when she thinks of the last time Yang took her fingers into her mouth.

“If you ask any girl in Menagerie, it isn’t.”

Yang accepts the levity, laughs. The tips of her ears pink. “It wasn’t _that_ many girls.”

Blake shifts, settles, feels Yang sigh underneath her. “So how does it happen?”

Yang is still looking at her steady, slow. “How does what happen?”

“How do we fall in love?”

Yang swallows, sucks her bottom lip into her mouth, thoughtful.

“I think it would just, kind of, click.” Her hand drops to Blake’s lap, and she scrunches her fingers in the silk of Blake’s shift, fidgets. “Like, one morning I would wake up next to you and I wouldn’t be able to remember anything else. Wouldn’t be able to remember not being in love with you.”

Around them, Blake can feel the room quiet, soften. The moment swallows her, the air thick and cottony. A surge of affection hits her in the chest, so strong she feels her heart ache and quiver. Yang levels their eyes and smiles, slow.

“Too cheesy?”

Blake shakes her head. “Winter will _gag_.”

“Oh, of course.”

“So who asked who out?”

Yang reels back, aghast. “I asked you, _obviously_.”

Blake bristles despite herself, crosses her arms between them. “How is that obvious?”

Yang flattens a hand against her chest, widens her eyes. “I’m the charming one.” She adjusts their positions, wriggling until her back is pressed against the wall, lifting Blake off her lap a few inches to settle her more comfortable in the sling of her hips. She barely strains to heft her weight, and when she catches Blake’s eyes lingering on her arms, she grins. “And, you know, I’m taller.”

Blake huffs. “Are you the charming one, or are you just loud?”

“Blake,” Yang says, a sudden low that hits Blake right between her legs. “You have no idea how loud I can be.”

Blake feels her cheeks flush and tilts forward, dropping her forehead to Yang’s shoulder to hide her blush. “Fine. You can be the one to ask me out, but only because I know your ego needs constant stroking or you’ll, like, die.”

Yang laughs, and Blake can feel the rumble of it reverberate down her spine, sparking a matching joy in her chest. She pulls back a little, just to catch the tail end of Yang’s laugh, her eyes squinting shut, that one dimple that creases high in her right cheek.

“How else are we selling it?” Blake asks. The longer they talk about Yang’s scheme, the more the idea grows on her. It reminds her of the reconnaissance missions she used to head in the White Fang, a thousand years ago. Or Team RWBY’s well meaning heists – sure, they often fell apart before they began, but the planning, the strategy, that’s Blake favorite part.

How is pretending to date Yang any different? Perfectly executed, perfectly acted, espionage. She’s a professional – how hard could it be?

She wriggles again, excited. Yang regards her, weary.

“Oh no,” Yang says. She squints. “You’ve got that look.”

Blake hums. “What look?”

“Your menacing ‘I’m-an-evil-mastermind’ look. I know it well.” Yang frowns, plays her hand through Blake’s hair, tilting her head this way and that, examining. “Yup, this is the same look that always comes before I end up crawling through some air vent in a Mantle stronghold with no fucking clue where I am and 25 armed mercenaries on my tail.”

Blake scoffs. “That was one time.”

“Forgive me, but it was memorable.”

Blake shrugs. “I just want us to lay the ground rules. Like – PDA. Where do we stand on that?”

If she didn’t know better, Blake would think Yang blushes.

“Um. Hand holding is nice.”

Blake holds out a hand and Yang takes it, laces their fingers. Blake’s breath catches. “So are we waffling?”

Yang scoffs. “Are we in high school, or am I railing you on a regular basis?”

“God.” Blake looks at their hands, hard. “Fine, waffling it is.”

“Where do we stand on kissing?” Yang says it matter of fact, almost clinical, but Blake can’t seem to catch her eyes.

“I mean,” Blake hesitates, casts a glance around the room like an answer will appear written on the wall. “We’ve kissed before.”

“Have we?” Yang’s voice is low. Her lashes cast thin shadows on her cheek. The last syllable is barely audible, just a hum of parted lips.

Blake feels all the breath leave her at once.

She doesn’t say: this morning in the kitchen, when you dipped me, and pressed a kiss long-warm-soft to the corner of my smile.

She doesn’t say: last month, when Ruby called me, exasperated, her voice thin, and told me it was my turn to pick you up from the bar _or so help me God_. Found you whiskey-drunk and pliant in a corner booth, that you met my hug with a kiss square on my mouth.

She doesn’t say: last summer, in that godforsaken casino, when you pushed me into the dark well of a staircase and slipped your tongue into my mouth, tasting like vodka and cigarette smoke and all those things we never talk about in the morning.

She doesn’t say: last year, after I left again. When I came back it was raining, and you were crying, and we never brought that night up again.

Instead, she says: “We have.”

Yang answers: “Remind me.”

Blake manages a pale laugh, shifts, feels Yang’s hands tighten at her sides. The air in the room is stuffy and thick as the heater cranks into overdrive, trying to combat the frost creeping in fractals across the thin-paned glass of the windows. Her ears twitch back, pivot, and she catches sound shedding from the ballroom below — the clink of glasses from three floors down, a murmur of voices, the hasty screech of a bow over a violin string as the orchestra begins to tune up.

But here, now, Yang is tipping her face toward her, shaking her bangs out of her eyes.

“I don’t know how,” Blake says, quietly.

“You don’t know how?” Yang asks. There’s a smile playing at the corner of her mouth, and Blake folds into her, shivering closer, the friction of her body pulling at the thin wrapping of Yang’s robe. It reveals a patch of skin on her chest, a freckle below her collarbone.

Yang’s question feels like an out, an escape cord, and Blake grapples for it.

She puts on a voice, a little simpering, a little airy. “I’ve never kissed a girl before.”

The joke is a complete contradiction to reality, even to their conversation just moments before, but it succeeds in making Yang snort, smile pulling wider.

“Oh yeah? Tell that to your tongue down Ilia’s throat at the midsummer bonfire.” Her smile grows, lecherous. “Or that one time with Velvet –”

Blake bats at her arm. “God, Yang. Play along.”

A little delighted, Yang laughs. “Okay. I’ll teach you.”

She straightens, clearing her throat, faux-serious. Blake sits up, similarly at attention.

“How do we start?” Blake asks.

Yang squints her eyes, taps at her mouth thoughtfully. “Let’s start slow. A peck.”

Blake acquiesces easily. She thinks, later, perhaps she should have put up more of a fight.

It feels, suddenly, like toeing an unspoken line. They don’t talk about how Blake spends most nights in Yang’s bed, or about the days Blake can’t leave her own apartment until Yang shoulders her way through the door, washes the sheets on the bed, the dishes in the sink, coaxes food into her mouth until she feels steady enough to bear it.

They don’t talk about how Blake knows if she peeled back Yang’s robe, she would find a small, dark tattoo of the Belladonna emblem, inked into the hollow of her left hip.

But tonight is Yule – and reality, rules, cave to Yang’s wide, earnest eyes, a color Blake knows better than her own.

Yang cups Blake’s cheek in one hand, her palm warm on her jaw, her middle finger rolling the stud of her eyebrow piercing, stroking soft down her temple.

“You ready?”

Blake nods, neck lolling.

She can’t navigate her way around the obstacles in Yang’s expression – a mouth like quicksand, the slant of her eyebrows uncharted – but her touch is soothing, quieting, and the room thickens, a sticky-syrup-slow.

It feels like the moment before impact, like priceless porcelain teetering on a counter’s edge, like something breakable suspended before the fall.

Yang tilts her head to meet her, and Blake forgets to close her eyes. She watches Yang’s lashes flutter against her cheek, feels her breath warm against her cheek.

There’s the soft give of their lips meeting, almost aligned, chaste. Yang falters, moves her lips imperceptibly, a whisper. They brush Blake’s once, twice, her nose nudging at the swell of her cheek. It alights the nerves in Blake’s body in pinpricks of pleasure, tingling, like blunt nails scratching gentle down the bare skin of her back.

A sigh unknots in the back of her throat. The noise escapes in a low purr, and Yang hums her amusement into the kiss. Blake feels the sound echo against her mouth, a staccato buzz.

Yang pulls back first, and it’s the loss of heat that registers more than anything else, a cool absence as she drops her hand back to Blake’s lap.

“That wasn’t so bad, huh?”

Wordless, Blake shakes her head.

Yang waggles her eyebrows. “Wanna try something a little more advanced?”

Blake nods. She can feel her pupils contract, can sense Yang’s heartbeat through the heat of her skin, solid and strong.

When she speaks, Yang’s voice is a throaty low. “Part your lips, just a little.”

Blake obeys.

Yang takes her chin between two fingers, appraises her, thumbs at the jut of her bottom lip. The plush of her fingertip scrapes over Blake’s teeth. “Now hold still.”

Yang leans in. This time, Blake closes her eyes.

Their lips meet, give, and then there’s the crush of contact, the waxy slide of Yang’s lipstick stalling the natural friction. Blake catches Yang’s bottom lip between her own, feels her stomach swoop and simmer. She registers a dampness that she will later recognize as Yang’s breath, feels her exhale against the bow of her lip.

The world narrows to the rush of blood in her head, to the quilted heat of the bedroom. Yang tilts her head, changes the angle until their mouths slot close. Catches her in a third kiss, a little fuller. Blake bites down, sinks sharp teeth into the plush of her lip. Yang’s hands fist in Blake’s shift, pulling tight until their hips meet.

She grunts at the contact and pulls back, eyes wide. Their mouths separate with a wet pop, lipstick worn thin at the seam of her bottom lip.

“I think,” Yang says, words caught in the trough of a pant, “that you’re ready for the pop-quiz.”

“Is the professor talk supposed to be turning me on?” Blake says. Her own voice startles her, a little rough, a little sultry. “Because it’s working.”

She meant it to sound like a joke, but her delivery misses the mark. Cheeks pinking, Yang swallows.

Blake watches the bob of her throat, follows the line down to her chest, the robe still rucked to the side. A thin sheen of sweat paints her cleavage, a red flush crawling across the skin, and Blake steadies herself with a hand at the back of Yang’s neck.

“I’m going to kiss you again,” Yang says, seriously. She wets her lip, gaze flicking up to Blake’s eyes and then down again. “And you’re going to open your mouth for me, okay?”

Blake almost moans.

They lean in at the same time, and there is the brief jostle of noses, a transitory misalignment where Yang’s mouth catches her half on her chin – but then Yang tilts her head and rolls her tongue into Blake’s mouth. It jolts between her legs like a touch. Yang might as well have slipped her hands up Blake’s dress, might as well have dismantled her, limb from limb.

Fingers tightening at the back of Yang’s neck, Blake urges her closer, a whimper falling from the back of her throat, swallowed by Yang’s own throaty murmur.

The kiss is like stepping into a pool of water. She feels the sudden shock, weightlessness, the viscous tension breaking and spilling as Yang’s tongue dips into her mouth.

It feels so natural, like a homecoming, pleasure pulsing low in her stomach. Yang’s hands curl around her hips, guiding Blake into a slow grind that leaves them both gasping.

Every night Blake has spent in Yang’s bed, every day spent shoulder to shoulder, skin to skin, she can’t fathom how they haven’t been doing this, this devouring, this closeness.

It’s not even romantic, she tells herself, hardly sexual – it’s the natural conclusion to years of partnership, the only way to surround her, to be inside of her. To fully and completely belong to her, to the hot press of her mouth and the bruising grip of her hands.

I can protect her like this, Blake thinks. Only like this, I can protect her.

Blake’s teeth catch on Yang’s bottom lip, hard enough to bruise, and they jar apart. Blake tilts her brow to meet Yang’s, so she can still feel her breath hot against her mouth.

Knees dig uncomfortably into the hardwood floor, pebbling under the pressure, and there’s a sweet, sore stretch in her thighs where she straddles Yang’s lap, straining for contact. But she can’t fathom moving, can’t imagine having anything but Yang’s heat pressed against her front, dripping between her thighs.

She is desperate to think of anything but how closely the open crush of Yang’s mouth mimicked her dream. How last night she opened her legs, touched herself, came with Yang’s name on her lips.

“How—” Blake starts, stops. Clears her throat. “How was that?”

Yang wets her lips, loosens her grip. “A-plus.” Her lips are bee-stung and bruised, eyes blown wide into dark, onyx pools, only a thin well of purple ringing the pupil. Wisps of blonde hair cling at the crown of her brow, eyebrows puckering into a soft tilt.

Her lipstick is smeared to hell, running bloody down her chin, at the corner of her mouth.

Blake feels her stomach throb, can feel herself slick and wet between her thighs. Reminds herself, again, again, that it’s chemical, reactive.

It can’t hurt if no one ever knows.

“Blake,” Yang says, a little abrupt. There’s that look again – the one Blake can’t quite read – shuttering her eyes like dark curtains, tilting down the corners of her mouth. “I—”

The syllable halves, stutters.

“You?” Blake prompts.

Yang’s face breaks into a sheepish grin, one hand coming up to rub hard at the back of her neck. “I think you’re ready. There’s no way Winter won’t buy this.”

“Right,” Blake says. If her stomach drops, she doesn’t know why. “Winter.”

Yang shivers. “God, her name alone is like a cold shower.” She wipes at her mouth, looks at the lipstick that comes away on her fingers and laughs. Reaching for the makeup bag she offers Blake the brass tube like a peace offering, a white flag. “Fix my make-up?” Her eyes crinkle as she smiles. “I think half of it is on your face anyway.”

Blake snatches the lipstick, schools her voice into a goodhearted grumble. “And that’s my fault?”

“More like a team effort,” Yang says.

It’s enough to set them both laughing and the tension breaks, dissolves. Blake can almost pretend like she doesn’t feel completely fucked, that she can’t still feel the wet of Yang’s spit slick around her mouth from that kiss, dirty and long, tongues rolling together, teeth clashing.

She dismounts from Yang’s lap slowly, her body sighing and liquid, resisting the loss of heat.

“Weiss is going to kill us,” Blake says. She averts her gaze from Yang’s eyes carefully, concentrates on uncapping the tube, spinning the notched casing with her fingers. “We’re going to be so late.”

“Good,” Yang says. “Might as well make an entrance, anyway.”

She reaches out a hand, thumbs away a rouge smear of her own lipstick from Blake’s lip.

Yang rubs her fingertips together until the stain dissolves. Wears thin. After a moment, it’s like there was nothing there at all.

**

“Mother _fucker_.” Weiss is deeply regretting letting Ruby talk her out of handing out walkie-talkies. Even her offer of tasteful, _discrete_ ear pieces was vetoed. “Where the _fuck_ are they?”

Ruby rubs a consoling hand at the small of her back. “They’ll be here.”

Weiss leans back into her touch, letting the pressure soothe the knot of tension in her shoulders.

Ruby tilts her head toward the doorway, watches guests trickle in, tucking gilded invitations back into their breast pockets or into small, crystalline clutches as they pass through security. The party is black-tie, golden-hued, and mistletoe drips from the doorway in lavish, green boughs.

“Knowing them, they’re wrestling somewhere upstairs,” Ruby says, dragging her hand up to massage small circles into the bare skin of Weiss’s neck.

Weiss sighs, pinches the bridge of her nose. “That’s exactly what I’m worried about.”

Around them, the ballroom begins to fill. Against the far wall, tables covered by white linen are heaped with decadent desserts and canapes, a tier of champagne glasses glitter with liquid gold, compressed bubbles sparkling in amber.

A chamber orchestra carves around a small raised platform at the head of the room, a selection of Atlas’s premier symphony, accompanied by a pianist on a sleek, black grand piano.

Above them, the ceilings arc into an elaborate fresco, depicting a scene from an old Remnant fairytale. A wolf bares its way across the gilt ceiling, a maiden disappearing into the lip of an ornate, dark wood.

Though the Schnee Manor has been renovated time and time again, the ballroom has never been significantly altered, and wealth drips from the walls like baubles, drowning polished marble floors in the acrid stench of old money.

“Do you want a drink?” Ruby asks. She studies Weiss’s face, nods. “You want a drink.” She starts off, half turns, looks Weiss square in the eyes. “You look beautiful, by the way.”

It hits Weiss like a punch in the gut, and she watches Ruby retreat toward the bar, feeling as frozen as her family name suggests.

Her gown is a white sheath, floor length, with a detailed bodice, sewn with pearls, accented in frosty blue. She had twisted her hair into a crown of braids under Blake’s direction, and her neck feels naked, vulnerable, without the weight of her ponytail brushing the skin.

A voice behind her, low. “I would have to agree.”

She turns to find Ilia, hands stuffed deep in the pockets of her slacks. Her hair ripples red when their eyes meet, freckles flushing.

“Oh,” Weiss says. She blinks.

They had gotten dressed separately, and she hadn’t expected this – a well-tailored suit, sans tie, dark lapels, open jacket.

Ilia steps closer, smiles, a little shy. “It all came together, huh?”

“Yeah, God, you look amazing,” Weiss blurts.

Ilia laughs, ducks her head. “I meant the party, but thank you.”

It’s Weiss’s turn to flush, but Ilia grins, steps forward to play her fingers along Weiss’s thin, silver bracelet. “Where’s Ruby?” she asks.

Weiss swivels her head. “Getting drinks, I think.”

“And the other two?”

Weiss rolls her eyes so hard she almost loses them halfway. “Don’t get me started.”

Ruby appears beside them, carrying two glasses. She grins. “We have a theory they’re holed up in a bedroom somewhere.”

Ilia laughs. “You’re probably right.” Then – “Speak of the devils.”

Blake and Yang sweep through the doorway, arm in arm. Blake is laughing at something, and Yang looks supremely pleased with herself. They bypass security with a wink, and Yang slips her arm around Blake’s waist, leans close to whisper something in her ear.

Watching from a distance feels almost voyeuristic. Even their dresses complement each other – Blake’s tight black mini against Yang’s scarlet gown, a slit up the leg teasing thigh, muscles flexing with each step.

Ilia tilts her head. “They certainly clean up well.”

Ruby mimes a gag. She hands off a champagne glass to Weiss and, after a brief hesitation, hands the second to Ilia.

“I’m going to go scope out the dessert table.” She sticks out her tongue. “The chocolate fountain is looking particularly inviting tonight.”

Weiss takes a half-step after her, and Ilia’s hand falls from her arm.

“Come and find me in a few?” Weiss asks.

Ruby pauses. Blinks. “Always.”

Weiss turns back to Ilia. Ruby disappears into the crowd.

**

“Do you see her anywhere?”

Yang’s voice is a low murmur against Blake’s cheek. Contextually, it’s an innocent gesture. But with the flush pleasure of the bedroom still writhing under her skin, the feeling of Yang’s breath against the shell of her ear makes her shiver.

Her ears twitch. With narrows eyes she scans the room. “Nope.”

Yang curls her arm around the slim of her hips, tugs her against her side. “I’m sure Winter will find us soon. You’re hard to miss.”

They are drifting toward the bar, but Blake pauses to tilt her head toward Yang, quizzical.

“What does that mean?”

Wearing heels, Yang has to drop her chin to meet Blake’s eyes. “I don’t know how anyone here could take their eyes off of you.”

It’s such a line. The kind Blake imagines Yang uses to coax girls into bed, paired with an indulgent smirk, with a toss of long hair and a shooter of whiskey.

It shouldn’t work, but this Yang – the closeness, the careful touch, that dimple at the corner of her smile – has always been hers.

“You look stunning,” Yang says.

Her eyes rake appreciatively down the length of Blake’s dress. Linger on her bare legs, on the mesh paneling across the chest, the abdomen, down the length of one sleeve.

“So do you,” Blake says, head flush with how badly she means it.

Yang slides one hand down the length of Blake’s arm until she reaches her the bangles of her bracelets, interlaces their fingers slowly. Ducking close, her exhale ruffles Blake’s bangs, lips ghosting over the crown of Blake’s head. Her next words are low, laughter caught behind the syllables, “I think this is the part where you tell me you love me.”

“Oh yeah?” Blake tugs them toward the bar. “Is that how the story goes?”

“You going to be a good fake girlfriend or not?”

Blake turns to look at her head on, ready to snap a comeback. But Yang is half-smiling still, tendrils of hair framing her face, the neckline of her dress plunging low enough that Blake has to wrench her eyes up to safer territory – the creamy curve of her neck, the hard line of her jaw, her lipstick – impeccable.

None of this is safe.

“Maybe after you get me a drink,” Blake says. If she’s directing her entire sentence at Yang’s chest, she figures she won’t notice.

“Roger that,” Yang says. She leads them toward the bar, her arm slipping around Blake’s waist as they steer through the crowd.

As always, Yang is attuned to any sign of Blake’s discomfort. She arranges herself a little in front, like she can protect Blake from the jostle of champagne-drenched businessmen, from any ill-meaning glances.

They protect each other. They have since they found each other at 17, since they met eyes in a death filled forest, since Blake came back to her, again, again.

Yang takes up space at the bar with a broad-shouldered confidence. She tucks Blake into her side on instinct, her hand soothing up-and-down her ribcage, lingering on the bare skin teased through the cutouts in her dress.

She rescues two tequila shots from the bar top, pinches them between her pointer and thumb. Holds them up.

“You game?”

Blake rolls her eyes. “Real classy, Xiao Long.”

“Baby, it’s an open bar.” Yang leans close enough that her breath is hot against Blake’s upper-lip. “We’re getting messy.” She shrugs. “What’s Weiss going to do, kick us out?”

She hands off one of the shots, licks spilled tequila from her fingers, never one to waste. Blake takes hers with narrow eyes.

“Can you get us lime?” She eyes the shot. It’s a double, filled nearly to the brim. “Maybe salt.”

Yang looks at her, pleased. “Genius.” She leans back over the counter, reels in the bartender with a smile.

Behind her, a voice. “Mind if we join?”

Blake turns to be find Ilia, a petulant Weiss in tow.

“You know this is a charity ball,” Weiss says. “Yang could have waited longer than five seconds to start downing liquor.”

“It’s Atlas, Schnee,” Ilia says, all drawl and droll. “You can’t possibly expect us to survive this sober.”

Weiss looks around, clocking a gaggle of investors conferring by the sweeping boughs of the Yule tree, a crowd of high-ranking members of the Atlas military milling by the orchestra.

“You know, you might be right.” She raises her voice to call to Yang. “Make that two more, you barbarian.”

Yang turns to look at her over her shoulder and grins, delighted. “Sure thing, princess.”

They step away from the bar, armed with their shots, lime wedges, and a small glass shaker of salt. They form a loose circle adjacent to the dance floor, and Blake gets briefly lost in the whirl of dancers, the step of well-oiled dress shoes, as couples spin out onto the polished marble floor.

They pass the shaker in turn and Blake watches Yang lick a long stripe down the back of her hand, her tongue pink and wet, connotations spiking between her legs as Yang’s eyes raise slowly to meet hers.

When she hands off the shaker, their fingers brush. Blake shivers at the touch, sees Yang framed by gilded archways, sees her framed in light, framed between her palms.

She looks away as she wets her own hand, dousing damp skin in fine granules. Thinks if she looks at her, meets her eyes, they will both find things they can’t unsee.

Primly raising the shot, Weiss clears her throat. Blake turns to her, surprised to see her cheeks pinking.

“I just – well.” Weiss starts, stops. “I just want to thank you guys for celebrating Yule with me this year.” She ducks her head, tucks a wisp of snow-white hair behind one ear. Her fingertips are sticky with lime juice, and Yang reaches over fondly to wipe carefully at Weiss’s cheek with her thumb.

“We’re your family, Weiss.” Yang shrugs, looking a little bashful now, too. “We’ll always show up. Even to a douchey Atlas ball. I mean, the open bar helps, but –”

Ilia cuts her off before she can gain momentum. “We’re happy to be here.”

Blake hums her agreement, feels her chest filling with a surge of fondness so keen it almost startles her. Contentment strikes her, unfamiliar and brimming.

Beside Yang’s Amazonian height – heels bringing her to just over six feet – Weiss looks so small. Slim shoulders stand a little straighter, like the acknowledgement has lifted some atlesian weight from her back.

She hefts her glass a little higher, and Yang, Blake and Ilia match the gesture. “What should we toast?”

“To Yule,” Ilia says.

Blake’s gaze is drawn to the vast windows. If she squints, she can see past the watery reflection of the ballroom, finds snow blanketing the grounds, the forest crawling black and spindly from the damp earth. Treetops web across a flat horizon, light pollution dimming the mid-winter sky to a rusty sheen.

The night draws long around them, myth ebbing and grasping at their periphery. At the edge of the woods, she imagines she can see something emerging from the dark.

“To Yule,” she echoes. “To keeping the spirits at bay.”

The shot goes down like a burn, scalding her tongue, her throat, and the pit of her stomach in turn. Even Yang stifles a cough.

“Shit,” Yang says. She muffles her curse in a long bite of the lime, lips peeling back around the pulpy fruit. “Now that’s the fucking good stuff.”

Weiss’s cheeks are a flush red now, and she giggles airily, leaning hard on Ilia’s arm.

Yang looks at her, amused. “Feeling it, Weiss?”

Waving her off with one hand, Weiss turns her cheek into the soft fabric of Ilia’s jacket, blithely wrapping a small hand in Ilia’s. “I had two glasses of champagne already. If you weren’t late, you would know that.”

“I have a good excuse.” Yang meets Blake’s eyes and smiles, quiet, just for her.

Stacking the shot glasses, Yang drops them on a passing tray. Rolling tension out of her shoulders, she offers her arm to Blake.

“You want to dance?”

Blake takes her arm, but shakes her head. “You’re going to have to get me a lot drunker for that.”

Yang laughs, tugs them a few steps into the dance floor. Ilia and Weiss have drifted back to the bar, Ilia’s hand on the small of her back.

“Oh, yeah? If I remember correctly, you still owe me an ‘I love you.’”

“Well,” Blake tips her chin to meet Yang’s eyes. “I love you.”

Swallowed by the motion of the dancers, Blake and Yang are each other’s only tethers in a sea of swirling skirts, of clasped hands and moving bodies, the orchestra music welling like blood around the point of a blade.

Yang looks at her, jaw slack. Every part of her is so familiar – the taught bow of her top lip, the smattering of pale freckles that bloom across the bridge of her nose, over her cheeks. She reaches for Blake, her hands finding her waist, swallowing slim hips in broad, hot palms.

Even the supple metal is hot, warmed by motion, by Blake’s skin.

This, too, is unbearably familiar.

Blake feels a deep and terrible wanting. Above them, the wolf bleeds across the scenery of the ceiling, it’s mouth dripping, sharp teeth bared.

Yang glances toward the doorway, jerks her chin so Blake’s eyes will follow.

“We passed under mistletoe on our way in,” she says quietly. “It would be a shame to waste it.”

Blake hums her agreement. “Might be bad luck or something.”

Yang nods seriously. “And Winter could be watching.”

It’s shoddy logic at best. They’ve yet to see any sign of her and, as far as Blake knows, mistletoe has never kicked in retroactively. But. Yang is sucking her bottom lip into her mouth. She releases it slowly while Blake watches, plump and pink.

Blake would be shirking her mission if she _didn’t_ kiss her right now. If anything, it would make her a bad friend.

“Isn’t she, like, a spy or something?” Blake says, a little breathless. “She could literally be anywhere.”

Yang nods, eyes wide. “You’re so right.”

For show, for the performance, Yang drags her hands over her hips, up the cage of her ribcage, skating lightly against the side of her breasts, her neck, until she can cradle Blake’s jaw between two hands.

Blake thinks of games, of shattering, of shadows swallowing moonlight at the edge of a midwinter wood.

Thumbs stroke at her cheekbones, and Yang chases the touch with her mouth – brushes her lips at the plush of Blake’s cheek like punctuation, meandering her way to her jaw, nuzzling against the soft skin there, murmuring an endearment under the soft skin of her ear.

It might be _baby_ or _blake_ or _beautiful_ but it distracts from the moment Yang tips their mouths together, sighing relief into her like breath, like she doesn’t know how they waited that long.

It’s a slow kiss. Yang catches her mouth carefully, folds into her. She tastes like tart lime, like bitter salt, and Blake feels tequila-drunk from the press of her tongue against the seam of her lips, alone.

She wishes the curtain could drop here, that she could live inside the ruse for a few minutes more, before she wakes from another lucid dream to find her bed cold and Yang gone.

“Think this is convincing?” Yang murmurs into the kiss, and Blake shakes her head, can feel Yang smile under her mouth.

“Just in case,” Blake says, a whisper, “why don’t we try again?”

Yang eases against her, presses close, the only stillness among the swell of bodies around them. For now, all hers, steady and constant and bright.

Blake arches onto her tiptoes, wraps both arms around Yang’s neck, and lets herself lie for a little while longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yang: i've seen mistletoe before in my life, sometime, ever  
> blake: ur so smart, babe, put ur tongue in my mouth 
> 
> and to think, we're only one tequila shot in. find me on tumblr @ nevervalentines


End file.
